tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528Sun, 28 Jan 2018 18:21:31 +0000BooksReviewsNewsTolkienThe CimmerianMoviesBiographicalBlack GateRobert E. HowardHorrorHeavy MetalMusicConanVikingsBattlesScience FictionThoughts on fantasyThe HobbitSFFaudio.comHumorDungeons and DragonsKing ArthurSwords and SorceryRole-playingZombiesMetal FridayBernard CornwellPoul AndersonQuotesphilosophyBlade RunnerBruce CampbellEdgar Rice BurroughsMad MaxScott's ThoughtsThe Silver Key“The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.” -- Henry David Thoreauhttp://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)Blogger485125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-5620637527213295081Sat, 16 Feb 2013 18:32:00 +00002013-02-25T13:58:17.010-05:00BooksConanReviewsRobert E. HowardThoughts on fantasyConan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian: A review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MNdwWdU0kmw/UR_QP0wF4SI/AAAAAAAABAg/PGiUUxpFZpE/s1600/conan+academy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MNdwWdU0kmw/UR_QP0wF4SI/AAAAAAAABAg/PGiUUxpFZpE/s320/conan+academy.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><i>Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian</i> (McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013) offers a broad selection of essays on Conan, but not just the Conan of Robert E. Howard’s stories. It covers Conan in all his various forms, from the original <i>Weird Tales</i> barbarian, to the hulking brute of the Schwarzenegger film, to the various computer generated avatars in the Age of Conan computer game. In this way it differs greatly from its predecessors <i>The Dark Barbarian</i> and <i>The Barbaric Triumph,</i> which reserve their analysis for Howard and Howard’s stories alone.<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This book will, I suspect, set many Howard fans’ teeth on edge. It opens with an unapologetic defense of the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter-edited Lancer/Ace Conan paperbacks, positing that without these books Conan and Robert E. Howard would be all but forgotten today. Writes editor Jonas Prida, “The problem of de Camp’s decision to re-order the chronology and list himself on <i>Tales of Conan</i>’s cover as one of the authors has been alluded to, but what must also be admitted is that without the controlling hand of de Camp, both Conan and Howard may have gone the way of Kull, relegated to footnote status in investigations into fellow <i>Weird Tales’</i> contributor H.P. Lovecraft.” Now I personally have no issue with placing the DeCamp/Carter pastiches, or even the Conan films and videogames, under the academic microscope; far from it, I think it’s an interesting and worthy exercise. However Prida seems to think that the root of De Camp-ian resentment is purists defending the Conan canon, but I disagree: What draws the ire of many Howard fans is De Camp’s often mean-spirited assessment of Howard the man in these books’ introductions and elsewhere.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In addition, <i>Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian</i>trumpets itself as a trailblazer in what Prida describes as a limited field of traditional literary analysis (“The first scholarly investigation of Conan,” according to a blurb on the back cover). Though it tips a cap to Mark Finn’s <i>Blood and Thunder</i> and Glenn Lord’s The Last Celt, Prida has apparently either not heard of <a href="http://www.thecimmerian.com/celebrating-a-pair-of-milestones-in-howard-studies/"><i>The Dark Barbarian</i> and <i>The Barbaric Triumph</i></a>&nbsp;or does not consider them "scholarly," as these fail to garner a mention in the preface.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ah well, some troubling early signs aside, on to the contents.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The first essay, “Hyborian Age Archaeology: Unearthing Historical and Anthropological Foundations,” by Jeffrey Shanks is the best the book has to offer, in my opinion. Here Shanks makes a convincing case that the solidarity of the Hyborian Age “comes from its grounding in the Primary World disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, geology, and history—albeit only to the level those disciplines had reached in the early twentieth century.” Shanks ably demonstrates how Howard’s reimagining of our world was shaped by now scientifically outdated works like H.G. Wells’ <i>The Outline of History</i> and E.A. Allen’s <i>The Prehistoric World</i>, <i>or Vanished Races</i>, as well as then popular theories on the existence of Atlantis and ideas sprung from the Theosophy movement. “Many of the ideas expressed [in Howard’s “The Hyborian Age” essay] while not accepted today, were actually widely believed in Howard’s time,” writes Shanks. “This includes the over-emphasis on theories of racial typology and migrations, rapid evolution and de-evolution, cataclysmic geology, and the like.” It’s good stuff from Shanks, who writes with the authority of an archeologist (he just so happens to be one, in fact).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Frank Coffman follows that up with a solid if not groundbreaking entry in “Barbarian Ascendant: The Poetic and Epistolary Origins of the Character and his World.” Here Coffman takes issue with Howard’s oft-quoted statement that Conan “stalked full grown out of oblivion and set me at work recording the saga of his adventures.” He notes that while Howard may not have created Conan from a conscious process, “there were <i>unconscious processes</i> at work.” The seeds of Conan were sewn not only in the characters of Kull and Bran Mak Morn and the stone-tipped spear wielding Am-Ra, but also worked out in his verses about Vikings and Celts, and in correspondence with the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Coffman’s essay includes an interesting side discussion on Howard’s conflicted feelings of the nature of barbarism and whether or not he truly believed it superior to civilization. While a fascinating glimpse of Howard’s nuanced, changing views on which state—barbaric vs. civilized—was indeed the natural state of mankind, it deserves a fuller treatment and blunts the main thrust of Coffman’s essay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Women,” Winter Elliot takes a nuanced, complex look at both the women in Conan stories and the barbarian himself, both of whom she categorizes as the “Other,” outsiders arrayed against the constraints of Hyborian Age civilization. Conan is continually drawn to the riches and allure of cities even as he stands in opposition to the civilized state, Elliot writes, and this tension defines his character. “A barbarian might seize a kingdom—but a civilized man must rule,” notes Elliot. Likewise, she writes that Howard’s women are defined by their relationships with a civilization that “both permits their enslavement and abuse, and sometimes offers qualified protection and support.” Howard’s women are passive objects, she writes, but not always. Valeria, for example, “represents a mediation between the possibilities of female agency and her own gendered identity.” Elliot concludes that although the Conan stories often contain racist and sexist elements, “not all of his stories or characters, male or female, can be reduced to mere chauvinist stereotypes.” Elliot’s essay gets a lot murkier when attempts to tie Conan and the women in his stories together in some uneasy alliance of outsiders, leading to tortured arguments like this: Women’s bodies are objectified, but so too is Conan’s, and this puts him in a female position. “He may be written male, but he doesn’t perform a male role,” says Elliot, of Conan. Interesting, but I don’t buy it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Daniel Weiss’ “Robert E. Howard’s Barbarian and the Western: A Study of Conan Through the West and the Western Hero” in convincing fashion links the Conan stories and “Beyond the Black River” in particular to the western novel. The westerns, like the Conan stories, confront the problems of settling matters of law and justice with violence (Conan’s moral code of stopping to help those who are wronged, as in “Tower of the Elephant,” is compared to James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and its hero, Natty Bumpo). Like the westerns, the Conan stories contain an equivocal view of progress, which pits individual free will and desire against empire and destiny, and the natural world against the civilized. “Both Howard and Cooper desired the natural world and its inhabitants to withstand the destructive forces of civilization, but progress settled the claim,” writes Weiss. More good stuff here.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Beyond the Black River” receives further treatment in Paul Shovlin’s “Canaan Lies Beyond the Black River: Howard’s Dark Rhetoric of the Contact Zone,” which compares that story to Howard’s non-fantasy tale “Black Canaan.” It’s nice to see a critic who can move beyond the shrill cries of “racism” when evaluating “Black Canaan,” and Shovlin has some interesting things to say about how the two stories treat with the American frontier myth. “If “Beyond the Black River” can be read as a fantasy version of Howard’s ideal as it related to the frontier, then “Black Canaan” offers a parallel that might be read as a fantasy version of the reality that surrounded Howard, the murky life and race relations after the imagined certainties of the frontier were gone and settlement led to decay rather than the development of truly “civil” society,” Shovlin writes. Where Shovlin errs, I think, is his assessment of the end of “Beyond the Black River,” which he writes off as a simplistic revenge-empowerment fantasy, but which I read as Howard conveying the fruitlessness of colonialism, as well as a tragic and decidedly mixed view of life on the frontier.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ll admit to being largely indifferent to Daniel M. Look’s “Statistics in the Hyborian Age: An Introduction to Stylometry,” which compares Howard’s writings to the pastichers based not on traditional literary critique such as themes or content, but on a mathematic comparison of sentence length, average syllables per word, and the particular “marker words” various authors are apt to use known as stylometry. For my money it dwells too long on the origins, concepts, and uses of the stylometric method and not enough on the differences between the DeCamp/Carter Conan and Howard’s works. But Look scores points for originality, and his method does reveal some significant differences between the original works of Howard and those works as edited by De Camp.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Part 2 of Conan Meets the Academy, “The Cultural Conan,” includes four essays on Conan post-REH. These entries examine how the 1982 <i>Conan the Barbarian</i> film subverts the invincible, white, alpha-male heroes of the typical Schwarzenegger film &nbsp;(“Arnold at the Gates,” by Nicky Falkof), how gender and sexual orientation shape players’ views of the scantily-clad avatars in the Age of Conan video game (‘Hot Avatars’ in ‘Gay Gear’ by James Kelley), how Howard’s enduring popularity may be as much due to the denuding of traditional masculinity and the ceding of power to women and nostalgia for simpler, more barbaric times than literary appeal (“Fandom and the Nostalgia of Masculinity” by Stephen Wall), and a comparison of Conan to Terry Pratchett’s parody of the muscular barbarian stereotype, Cohen the Barbarian of <i>The Light Fantastic</i> ("‘Barbarian Heroing’ and its Parody: New Perspectives on Masculinity," by Imola Bulgozdi).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It would be interesting to hear what the posters over on the <i>Conan.com</i> boards think of Wall’s essay, as they (and an anonymous poster identified only as “Jim”) are used for evidence for Wall’s theory that Conan appeals to readers in large part due to his rugged manliness, strength, and will to power, characteristics lacking in men bred to sedentary office lives. I happen to agree that escape is something Howard’s Conan stories do offer—and that escape is a worthwhile literary pursuit—though I also believe it is only part of the appeal of the Conan stories, and alone cannot account for Howard’s continued relevance. If Conan offered just hyper-masculine wish fulfillment, we’d all be reading <i>Gor </i>novels instead. Why has Conan outlasted Brak and Thongor? Conan is better written, a higher form of art by a more talented author. That’s why.<br /><br />&nbsp;So despite my problems with <i>Conan Meets the Academy</i> I believe its publication is a boon to Howard and Howard studies. Though you may not agree with all the essayists’ conclusions, to see Conan given serious treatment as a lasting literary and popular figure is further validation that Howard’s stories are worthy of serious discussion and analysis, not consignment to the dustbin of history or kneejerk “shunning” by the modern reader. Conan is here to stay.</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2013/02/conan-meets-academy-multidisciplinary.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-2787345808496553637Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:22:00 +00002013-01-04T07:24:45.416-05:00Thoughts on fantasyTolkienHappy birthday to JRR Tolkien; jeers to Philip PullmanPhilip Pullman is another notable fantasy author who, alongside the likes of Michael Moorcock and Richard Morgan, has grossly missed the mark in his appraisal of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. Listening to this recent <a href="http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/geeks-guide-philip-pullman/"><i>Geeks Guide to the Galaxy</i> podcast</a>I was dumbfounded not only by Pullman’s ignorance of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, but the gall he exhibits throwing around opinions on a work he admittedly read only once—and as a <i>teenager.</i> “I’ve tried to read it since, but I was unsuccessful,” <st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city> says in the interview (note: the Tolkien portion starts around the 17:10 mark; its only a two minute segment or so of the interview). Admitting this fact should automatically invalidate any opinions you have on <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. I was forced to read <i>Moby Dick</i>in high school. Had that been the only time I read it, and 40 years passed, how much would my opinions on the book matter? None, right?<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But since <st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city>is a big-time successful author, in the eyes of some we must take him seriously. So I’m taking this opportunity on what would be Tolkien’s 121<sup>st</sup>birthday to show just much how much he gets wrong. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br />Pullman’s primary criticism of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is that it does not sufficiently deal with our world, unlike the most “successful” fantasies which deal with “some aspect of real life”. While somewhat a matter of opinion and interpretation, <st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city>’s assessment is as close to flat-out wrong you can be in the subjective world of literary criticism (very high schoolish, you might say). To wit: The problem of power and possessiveness (as symbolized in the One Ring) is not an element of real life? In what universe is this the case? How about death and the pursuit of deathlessness? How about wars, and their destructiveness? How about the lessons of The Scouring of the Shire? How about the destruction of the environment, and the equivocal nature of progress? How about the fact that its author was a traumatized veteran of World War I, and that his experiences on the Somme inform its battles, its soldiers manning the walls of Minas Tirith, and the landscapes of the Dead Marshes? Are these issues not real enough for you, Mr. Pullman? This is what happens when you read a book once in high school and think you’ve got it all figured out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city>also reveals a very narrow view of the purpose of fantasy novels and the characters they contain, which (he thinks) must serve a modern version of reality. The implication of his argument is that characters must be written in a certain way, conflicted with self-doubt and petty day to day preoccupations; older forms of literature that feature larger than life heroes, or modern novels which derive their inspiration from these older sources (such as LOTR) are therefore lesser in some regard. For example, <st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city>claims that the only interesting character in the entirety of Tolkien’s universe is Gollum, and the rest are “cardboard” and “not sufficiently like him to be interesting.” But again he shows his lack of familiarity with the novel: Any half-perceptive reader will find several fallible, in many respects very modern human characters, including Boromir, Denethor, and Saruman. Also, as I have argued before, the vast cast of characters of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, summed together, represent all the facets of humanity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But I also don’t find any of the non-conflicted characters “cardboard”; far from it. You don’t forget cardboard characters, and it’s hard to forget the dogged loyalty of Sam, or the cutting but good natured wit of Gandalf. Sure, Aragorn might not be Leopold Bloom, an angst-ridden, tortured soul whose inner journey we follow over hundreds of pages, but we love him nonetheless. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Petty aside: If Tolkien has cardboard characters, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city></st1:place>has committed the far more egregious sin of having a cardboard agenda. His last book in his “celebrated” His Dark Materials trilogy quickly devolves into a naked polemic against religion, to the detriment of any story he was trying to tell. <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city>also complains that <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>doesn’t include romance or sex, so that too makes it a lesser work. To leave out that aspect “in a book of that length seems like cheating,” <st1:city w:st="on">Pullman</st1:city> complains. What a load of horse shit! So all novels need to have this element, then, or else they “cheat.” It’s not enough to be inundated with the sex lives of celebrities 24 hours a day, our heroic fantasy must embrace this noble aspect of humanity as well, apparently. I wish one of the hosts on the <i>Geeks Guide to the Galaxy </i>followed up with this question: But Mr. Pullman, where is the sex in <i>Huckleberry Finn</i> or <i>Moby Dick</i>? Surely Melville was also “cheating” not to include a romantic relationship on the Pequod, right Philip?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyway, happy birthday to JRRT, and may he not have to endure the orcish criticism of the Philip Pullmans of the world in the Blessed Realm.</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2013/01/happy-birthday-to-jrr-tolkien-jeers-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-3515338367022724243Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:21:00 +00002012-12-29T20:36:28.003-05:00MoviesReviewsThe HobbitTolkienThe Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a review<i>Warning: Spoilers follow.</i><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As I left an IMAX 3D showing of <b>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</b> early Saturday evening, I struggled at first to determine why I experienced such ambivalence about the film. Then I hit on it: Director Peter Jackson has taken what is a tightly-plotted, 300-page novel and turned it into the equivalent of a multi-volume fantasy epic, with all the good and the bad that change entails.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My short review: <b>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</b> deserves the mixed ratings it has received (65% fresh on <i>Rotten Tomatoes</i> as of this writing). It was a qualified success, with some high points and some low points. It’s good, but not as good as <b>The Lord of the Rings</b> films, in my opinion. And in places it’s downright annoying.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">First the good. I had the opposite reaction of many reviewers, it seems, in that I very much enjoyed the opening 45 minutes or so. I was spellbound by the flashbacks of Erebor and its splendor, the coming of Smaug, and the Battle of Azanulbizar. I wish <st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place>spent more time on the dwarves and their banter with Bilbo.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I loved Martin Freeman as Bilbo. He absolutely nailed the part. Balin was excellent, and I loved Thorin, too. Frankly, all the dwarves were good. “Riddles in the Dark” deserves the praise it’s getting; it’s a wonderful scene.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So that said, what irked me about the film? It’s apparent (if it wasn’t already) that <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>has zero subtlety as a director. The chapter “Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire” features the Dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf fleeing from wolves into the trees; Gandalf rains down a few flaming pinecones on their pursuers before the eagles fly to their rescue. It’s memorable, believable, and it works in the book. In <st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place>’s hands this scene features swordplay, an epic slow-motion showdown of Thorin vs. Azog (with dwarves predictably mouthing “NOOO!”), trees falling like dominos until one final tree is about to fall over a cliff, and so on. It’s way too much. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The scene in goblin town was similarly overblown. Remember the collapsing bridge in Khazad-Dum (which I also found annoying) from <b>The Fellowship of the Ring</b>? Take that scene and multiply it by a factor of two or three. The Dwarves survive a fall seemingly of 100 feet or more amid twisted wooden wreckage onto a stone floor and end up completely unscathed. It’s utterly laughable. <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>doesn’t think it’s enough to hew to the book, in which the Dwarves aided by Gandalf cut their way free in the dark, then race down corridors, turning with Orcrist and Glamdring to slow the pursuit by slaying their pursuers at a corner. That’s great, and works just fine; in <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>’s hands the escape is an adrenaline-charged theme park ride with collapsing bridges, dwarves knocking goblins off perilous spans like tenpins, dwarves blocking arrows with swords, and so on. Too video-gamey for my tastes.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place>’s overindulgence is also apparent in the scene with the stone giants. These creatures looked cool, and the scene was working until <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city> ham-handedly turned it into the company surviving the equivalent of an artillery barrage with flying shrapnel. Given the volume of flying and falling rocks it is utterly inconceivable that someone would not have been killed or suffered multiple crippling injuries, but we’re asked to swallow this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I know what some of you might be saying: It’s just fantasy. If you can accept the presence of hobbits and dwarves, and dragons and magic, why not death-defying escapes? The difference is that these sequences violate the laws of physics, destroying our suspension of disbelief and robbing the real battles to come of any danger. When dwarves survive <st1:city w:st="on">great falls</st1:city> from bridges and trees without a scratch, and morph into goblin and orc-killing ninjas in every fight scene, it’s hard to feel any real suspense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The film’s biggest misstep is turning Bilbo into a hero far too early. In the book the turning point is “Flies and Spiders,” in which Bilbo, all alone in the dark, kills a spider with Sting, which is the turning point of his career; in “An Unexpected Journey” he’s already stabbing wargs and engaging in swordplay with goblins. Again, this diminishes the terror of the goblins; if they can’t dispatch a hobbit with no skill with a blade, how are they a credible threat to the dwarves? Since Bilbo has already impaled a charging warg with his blade, I have to believe his moment in the sun with the spiders is going to feel rather anti-climactic (though I’m sure the spiders will look great).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I also found Radagast the Brown rather unnecessary and distracting. Not awful, but certainly padding worthy of being trimmed. As was the additional battle sequence with the dwarves fleeing the wargs before being saved by Elven archers at the secret gate to Rivendell—this could have been safely cut.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My overall take? <b>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</b> is worth watching. It has some lovely highs. I laughed out loud at Martin’s reaction to the “fine print” of the dwarves’ contract (“Funeral expenses?”). I experienced a delicious chill at “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold,” which sounds like a mournful dirge. It’s my favorite scene, in fact. I give <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>a lot of credit for imbuing 13 dwarves with distinct looks and personalities, no mean feat. I also liked the ending, with Thorin’s heartfelt embrace of Bilbo, even if it was a bit telegraphed. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But as I said above, it has some ugly lows, too. I keep wondering whether part of my lukewarm reaction to it is simply the fact that it’s too much <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>, too soon; the images are too familiar. For example, Gollum was great, looking even better here than in LOTR. But we’ve seen him before; the wow factor is gone. Same with Hobbiton and Bag-End, which are again perfectly rendered, but are nothing we haven’t seen before.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Some have already said <b>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</b> is much more faithful to Tolkien than <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>’s Ring films. I would say that it both is, and is not. <b>An Unexpected Journey</b> retains a good deal of material from <i>The Hobbit</i> but also contains much more <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>, which is necessary due to the length and scope of the films. And <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>, it bears repeating, is no Tolkien. There’s too much connective tissue in here (either extrapolated from the appendices of LOTR, or created from whole cloth) and it shows. The LOTR films are better because they follow roughly the same storyline of the book (altered or expanded upon, but recognizably the book); they’re at their weakest when they are 100% <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>(such as Aragorn over the cliff). <b>An Unexpected Journey</b> features much more <st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place>, with predicable results. It’s hard to believe that after 2 hours and 45 minutes we’re only through six chapters. I’m already anticipating a purist cut that will surpass the original.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">To be fair to <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>, I have always believed that <b>The Hobbit</b>is more difficult to turn into a feature film than <b>The Lord of the Rings</b>. <b>The Hobbit </b>(book) lacks the gravitas and literary depth of <b>The Lord of the Rings</b>, and is essentially an episodic series of adventures and escapes in the wild, until the final 1/3 when it morphs into a more adult story focusing on Bilbo’s growth and emotional development. <b>An Unexpected Journey</b> covers only the first six chapters and so it naturally is just a series of escapes, interspersed with some downtime at Rivendell. <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city> simply overdoes the material he’s given, turning these chapters from brisk adventures into epic, overblown set-pieces. These escapes pass quickly in the book; in <st1:place w:st="on">Jackson</st1:place>’s hands they become overextended and repetitive. <i>The Hobbit</i> should have been two movies of 2 hours, maybe 2 ½ hours, but not three films of near three hours’ length. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course I’m going to watch the other two films. Some of my favorite sequences are still to come, including the meeting with Beorn, Barrels out of Bond, the events at Laketown, Bilbo’s encounter with Smaug, and of course The Battle of Five Armies. I have no doubt that I will thrill to the cinematic&nbsp;rendition of these scenes. But I hope that Jackson and co. take some of the criticism to heart and spend the next year tightening up these films and cutting out the unnecessary nonsense. Time will tell what <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>does with the final two acts but I hope they are an improvement on <b>An Unexpected Journey.<o:p></o:p></b></div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-hobbit-unexpected-journey-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-5237818247175812755Sat, 10 Nov 2012 01:16:00 +00002012-11-09T20:16:41.429-05:00BiographicalJust where is this guy?Readers the world round are surely wondering w<i>hat happened to that guy who writes The Silver Key blog?</i>&nbsp;I wish I had something really cool to report, for example that I've been called in as an emergency consultant on <i>The Hobbit</i>, but alas, no. The answer to my lack of posting these days is: Life, covering high school football, and a side writing project. These things have consumed much of my limited free time and prevented me from posting to the blog. So rather than banging out half-hearted posts I've decided to take an extended break.<br /><br />Am I burning with the news about Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Conan, or the muck Hollywood is making out of <i>World War Z</i>? You betcha. Have I been reading genre fiction worthy of critical review? Yes, that too. I just finished up the latest in Bernard Cornwell's ongoing Saxon Stories, <i>Death of Kings</i>, for instance. And a fair bit of swords and sorcery. I've been watching and enjoying <i>The Walking Dead</i>, too (alas, poor T-Dog, we hardly knew ye). I just don't have the time to write about these things with the blowhard attitude and half-baked analysis readers of this blog have come to appreciate and love.<br /><br />I do plan on coming back and blogging again, but not now, and likely not anytime soon. So for now, a semi- apropos snatch of poetry from the great REH:<br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I could not bide in the feasting-hall</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i>Where the great fires light the rooms—</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>For the winds are walking the night for me</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>And I must follow where gaunt lands be,</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Seeking, beyond some nameless sea,</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><i>The dooms beyond the dooms.</i></div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/11/just-where-is-this-guy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-7261084008837589625Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:32:00 +00002012-09-29T07:54:54.910-04:00BooksHorrorHumorReviewsSFFaudio.comZombiesThe Zombie Survival Guide, a review<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2PMkRwKcBwo/UGWYNl3vAwI/AAAAAAAABAI/D0sxQGWNem0/s1600/zombie_survival_guide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2PMkRwKcBwo/UGWYNl3vAwI/AAAAAAAABAI/D0sxQGWNem0/s320/zombie_survival_guide.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The next time a Class 2 zombie outbreak occurs in my neighborhood, I’ll be well-prepared to deal with the shambling corpses of hungry undead now that I’ve read Max Brooks’ <i>The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i> dispels exaggerated myths and legends of the undead and instead presents the reader with unvarnished “truths” about zombies. You’ll find information on zombies’ physical strength, sight, hearing, and rate of decay, and the pros and cons of various weaponry for battling the undead (everything from medieval maces and claymores, to M-16s and flamethrowers). It describes various scenarios for identifying early signs of localized (Class 1) outbreaks, to full-blown widespread undead infestation (Class 3). You’ll find best practices for battling zombies in urban settings, in harsh desert and swamp environments, even under the sea. <i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i> tells you how to defend your home by stocking up with key food and supplies, moving to your second floor and destroying all staircases (recommended for Class 2), or how to survive on the run as you move to the most remote and therefore safest parts of the planet in a world-wide zombie apocalypse in which mankind is overrun (Class 4). The best vehicle should an outbreak occur? You might not guess it, but it’s a bicycle. On a bike you can easily outrun the slow, slouching pace of zombies, it will never run out of gas, you can carry a bicycle over rough terrain, and you can maneuver a bike through the inevitable traffic jams that accompany a full-on panic. Motorcycles are very good too, though their noise attracts the undead. Boats are also a secure means of travel, says Brooks, but watch your anchor line—zombies walking on the ocean floor can use it to climb up to your boat. “Hundreds” of hapless victims have died this way, Brooks tells us.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i> serves as a perfect gateway to Brooks’ highly recommended <i><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2008/01/end-of-world-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel.html">World War Z</a></i>. If for nothing else, and you find Brooks’ post-apocalyptic strategems and survival tactics tedious, I’d recommend this book simply for the highly entertaining “Recorded Outbreaks” section. Here Brooks describes various zombie outbreaks throughout history, from ancient tales recorded in chilling primitive artwork, all the way up through living eyewitness accounts from the early 21<sup>st</sup> century. These are written in the economical journalism style that Brooks’ employs so effectively in <i>World War Z</i>, lending these “outbreaks” a documentary-style feel, which makes them seem more realistic and terrifying. According to Brooks there have been many zombie outbreaks throughout history—perhaps even in my neighborhood, hence my need to be ready—but&nbsp; these have been largely laughed off by skeptical media, ascribed to outbreaks of disease, localized madness, or industrial pollution, or covered up by governments or the CDC, fearful that public knowledge would result in full-scale panic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For all its earnestness you have to take <i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i> with a heavy dose of salt. While it’s written in a deadpan style and never descends into farce, and purports to be a “real” guide for complete protection against the walking dead, when you read passages like “If you want to know the true danger of an airborne (parachute) attack against zombies, try dropping a square centimeter of meat on a swarming anthill. Chances are, that meat will never touch the ground. In short, air support is just that—support. People who believe it to be a war-winner have no business planning, orchestrating, or participating in any conflict with the living dead,” you can’t help but laugh (I did laugh out loud, several times). While not as well-written or as compelling as <i>World War Z</i>, for zombie aficionados <i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i>is nevertheless a must-read.<br /><br />Marc Cashman narrates with a dry, clipped voice that perfectly suits the how-to nature of <i>The Zombie Survival Guide</i>. There’s a touch of William Shatner in his delivery, with dramatic pauses in odd places, but that only adds to the fun.<br /><br /><i>This review also appears on <a href="http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=43114">SFFaudio.com</a>.</i></div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-zombie-survival-guide-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-7871600493115749663Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:07:00 +00002012-09-11T19:07:48.552-04:00BooksKing ArthurReviewsSFFaudio.comLast Call by Tim Powers, a review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QOkKRb-Rjys/UE_DqyeEHnI/AAAAAAAAA_0/cwd-i3ST7cw/s1600/Last+Call+Tim+Powers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QOkKRb-Rjys/UE_DqyeEHnI/AAAAAAAAA_0/cwd-i3ST7cw/s320/Last+Call+Tim+Powers.jpg" width="297" /></a></div><i>Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player twenty years ago and hasn’t returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in ten years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead are drawing him back to the magical city. For the mythic game he believed he won did not end that night in 1969—and the price of his winnings was his soul. Now, a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card. Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, this World Fantasy Award–winning novel is a masterpiece of magic realism set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas.&nbsp;</i><br /><br />Tim Powers’ <b>Last Call</b> (1992 William Morrow and Co.; 2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.) is studded with references to old myths, snatches of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” the art of poker playing, and the unique culture and atmosphere of old and new Las Vegas. It contains numerous major and minor characters, overarching themes and subplots, and digressions into probability theory. In other words, it demands close reading and attention to detail. Listening to it in half-hour chunks as I did while driving to work was probably not the best idea, and may have affected my review of the book, but what follows is an honest appraisal.<br /><br /><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />There’s a lot to like in <b>Last Call</b>, and I lot I liked. At its heart it’s really about the vast, mysterious forces driving the universe and the ways in which they manifest in our lives. Why does tragedy pass over a criminal and take a good person instead? Why does a disease like cancer randomly strike a family man with a wife and children to support? Although life appears chaotic and meaningless, perhaps there are active, purposeful forces of fate at work as well, old gods that exist outside our typical suburban lives but can be sought out and appealed to, and even manipulated. In Last Call Powers breathes new life into ancient myths like the Arthurian Fisher King, the Greek god Dionysus, and the Egyptian goddess Isis, incorporating themes of resurrection and physical health tied to spiritual health. These ancient demigods reappear in the forms of unlikely modern-day characters, including broken-down ex-gambler Scott Crane and his estranged foster-sister Diana. <b>Last Call</b> also includes a cast of memorable bad guys, including a bloated fat hit man Trumbull who is convinced that eternal life can be had through the consumption of raw flesh, and the chief baddie Georges Leon, a mystic who achieves immortality through stealing and possessing the bodies of the living. Crane is the central figure in the story, a man who in 1969 played a portentous game of Assumption with a powerful set of tarot cards. Twenty years later Crane returns for a second game against Leon with nothing less than his soul on the line.<br /><br /><b>Last Call </b>is ultimately a hopeful book, as it implies that there may be a purpose to our lives and a way to control one’s destiny, if you can read the cards and master the archetypes of the Tarot. In Powers’ hands playing cards are a metaphor for the mysteries of life and the skill and luck required to navigate its uncertain waters.<br /><br />Neil Gaiman’s <a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2008/01/american-gods-review.html"><b>American Gods </b></a>employs a similar conceit of old gods reincarnated in the modern world but I must say I enjoyed Gaiman’s take better. Powers is a talented writer and I enjoyed his descriptions of the seedy soul of Las Vegas, as well as some memorable set-pieces he creates, including an encounter with the ghost of the infamous gangster Bugsy Siegel beneath the waters of Lake Mead. But the slow pace of the narrative, the meandering plotline, the too-numerous characters and plotlines that drop in and out of the story without sufficient explanation and resolution (Crane’s wife Susan, for example), and tedious descriptions of card game after card game make <b>Last Call</b> a difficult listen and at times an outright chore, despite the fine narration by Bronson Pinchot.<br /><br />Perhaps my lukewarm reaction to <b>Last Call </b>has something to do with the fact that I I’m not a fan of card playing; Vegas is a cool place to visit and I’ve tried my hand at a few slot machines, but sitting down at a table in the company of hardcore gamblers has zero appeal for me. If you read <b>Last Call </b>watch closely for the signs, the subtle flush of cheek or restless eyes that the best card players know how to detect and interpret. As for casual readers: Beware.<br /><br /><i>This review also appears on SFFaudio.com.</i>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/09/last-call-by-tim-powers-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-1476113466478492192Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:01:00 +00002012-08-30T22:01:50.424-04:00Black GateConanNewsRobert E. HowardPlethora of Howard Days Panels on YoutubeIf you didn’t make it out to Cross Plains Texas for Robert E. Howard Days <a href="http://www.rehupa.com/?page_id=3299">this past June</a> (I didn’t, and have not yet made the trip, though it is on my bucket list), despair not: You can experience the panels, vicariously, through the magic of Youtube. Videographer Ben Friberg filmed several of the panels and generously posted them for up for public consumption. They’re all incredibly interesting and fun, if you like this sort of thing. Here’s a quick list of links.<br /><br />To read the rest of this post, <a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/08/30/plethora-of-howard-days-panels-on-youtube/">visit The Black Gate website</a>.http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/08/plethora-of-howard-days-panels-on.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-8656066560379800849Tue, 28 Aug 2012 00:38:00 +00002012-08-27T20:38:15.322-04:00BiographicalThoughts on fantasySome thoughts on the purpose of fantasy fictionThe author of another blog I discovered recently, <a href="http://everythingisnice.wordpress.com/">Everything is Nice</a>, recently chose to describe a quote by George R.R. Martin as representative of everything wrong with commercial fantasy fiction. I happen to like the quote quite a bit (you can find Martin <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJhmxc3Arw">reading it aloud in its entirety here</a>), and asked why he felt that way.<br /><br />Martin (who happens to be the author of the blog, not the actual George RR Martin) responded that:<br /><br /><i>It plays into the artificial and embarrassing Us versus Them divide that is sadly all too common within the genre community. Beyond the stupidity of jamming his thumb on the scales and simply assigning high status words to the thing Martin likes, however, is the amusing contradiction that those high status words have to come from reality. As Sam says, you certainly couldn't get a bloody steak in reality, could you? At the most basic level, if Martin can't write movingly or beautifully about the strip malls of Burbank (and I'm certainly prepared to believe he can't) then he has no business writing anything. He is basically saying he has no eye, no ear, no empathy. And that is why it is speaks to the problem of commercial fantasy in general.</i><br /><i><br /></i>To which I replied:<br /><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I understand what you mean, Martin. Fantasy can certainly be applicable to reality, as Tolkien once wrote. But I guess I would differ with you that Martin’s quote represents everything wrong with commercial fantasy. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>What if the “them” in your “us vs. them” comparison is our world, not some particular piece of it? Martin is creating through his imagination another world that never was and never could be, but I would argue that this exercise is nevertheless of worth as it demonstrates our ability as humans to dream and to create. Imagination is something we as humans do, and its fruits (even the otherworldly ones) are thus part of the “real” human condition.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Do you think there is ever a place for other worlds, or must all fiction, even heroic fantasy, engage with our own world? Much of reality does suck, unfortunately; are we ever allowed even brief escape in the pages of a book?</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>I think Martin’s quote highlights something fantasy can do and strives to do, even if much of it is pedestrian and falls short in the attempt.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Just as a sidenote, I think it’s rather ironic that Martin of all fantasy writers would have chosen this quote, given that by far and away his most popular creation, A Song of Ice and Fire, is quite grim and dark and shares much more common with gritty historical reality (the bloody War of the Roses) than fantasy.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal">I'm hoping that there will be more debate to come, but what do you think? What function does fantasy serve, &nbsp;if it isn't set in or applicable to our own world?</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/08/some-thoughts-on-purpose-of-fantasy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-5591120672536513123Thu, 16 Aug 2012 18:47:00 +00002012-08-16T14:47:52.877-04:00BiographicalBlack GateBooksRobert E. HowardTolkienVikingsA Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore Score<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cgwmDUbcmek/UC1AHf-hXtI/AAAAAAAAA_g/-HZPhjoAUYw/s1600/CoverTheLongShips_Norstedts.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cgwmDUbcmek/UC1AHf-hXtI/AAAAAAAAA_g/-HZPhjoAUYw/s400/CoverTheLongShips_Norstedts.JPG" width="286" /></a></div>Brick and mortar bookstores are as rare as hen’s teeth these days, it seems, and that’s a shame. I enjoy the instantaneous convenience and enormous selection of Amazon and Abebooks, but there’s something about musty old bookstores that online shopping cannot replace. The tactile sensation of picking up books, the joy of utterly unexpected finds, and the atmosphere of a shop devoted to reading and book-selling, are experiences that online delivery mechanisms cannot replicate.<br /><br />Yesterday I found a wonderful bookstore that reminded me of the unique advantages and pleasures of the real over the virtual: Mansfield’s Books and More in Tilton, New Hampshire. Tilton is a town I had driven through numerous times without a cause to stop, outside of filling a gas tank and the like. But yesterday while playing chauffer on a back-to-school shopping trip with my wife and kids I caught a glimpse of a storefront window in Tilton center that I had previously overlooked. In a brief glance I took in a display of hardcover books in the front window and a few cartons of paperbacks placed outside with a sign indicating a sidewalk sale. My attention piqued, I managed to free myself from the clutches of clothes and shoe shopping with little difficulty and quickly backtracked to Mansfield’s.<br /><br /> Mansfield’s occupies what appears to be a former office building. The main room has a fireplace in one wall with a few overstuffed chairs. A narrow hallway at the back opens up on left and right to six rooms that were presumably individual offices at one time. Most of these smaller rooms were still hung with old, ornate doors with frosted glass panes and other such details, though one clearly served as a small kitchen at one point, complete with a sink. Each room—the main room in the front and the half-dozen at the back—was overflowing, floor to ceiling, with used books, as well as a scattering of other items (the “More” refers to some old movie posters, knickknacks, and used DVDs and CDs).<br /><br /><i>To read the rest of this post, <a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/08/16/a-brick-and-mortar-bookstore-score/">visit the Black Gate website</a>.&nbsp; </i>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-brick-and-mortar-bookstore-score.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-4310966038483531400Fri, 03 Aug 2012 01:19:00 +00002012-08-02T21:19:35.062-04:00Black GateMoviesNewsThe HobbitThree Hobbit Films for the LOTR Fans = Trouble<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nb7vcIgcMjk/UBsnCVx8IFI/AAAAAAAAA_M/c5-FQSOX38U/s1600/EW-Hobbit-Bilbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nb7vcIgcMjk/UBsnCVx8IFI/AAAAAAAAA_M/c5-FQSOX38U/s320/EW-Hobbit-Bilbo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Fans of Peter Jackson’s <b>The Lord of the Rings</b> should be thrilled that <b>The Hobbit</b>, originally planned as two feature films, is now slated for three. More Tolkien on screen is a good thing, right?<br /><br />Surely yes, if what we are getting is indeed more Tolkien. But Jackson’s “bridge” film is not going to be more Tolkien, but more Jackson. And that is not necessarily an encouraging thought.<br /><br />Due to contractual issues with the Tolkien estate—Jackson is unable to use material from <b>The Silmarillion</b>, <b>The History of Middle-Earth</b>, or <b>Unfinished Tales</b>—this “bridge” film will come from the appendices of <b>The Lord of the Rings</b>. Wrote Jackson on his Facebook page:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">&nbsp;“We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of <b>The Hobbit,</b> as well as some of the related material in the appendices of <b>The Lord of the Rings</b>, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth.”&nbsp;</blockquote><br />The appendices are certainly a mine of information, but the stories they tell are scattered, patchy in places, and not written as straightforward narrative. To bridge the events of <b>The Hobbit</b> to <b>The Lord of the Rings</b> in a film that neatly connects a series of disparate dots, Jackson must fill in gaps, construct dialogue from scratch, and so on. And that could spell trouble. <br /><br /><i>To read the rest of this post, v<a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/08/02/three-hobbit-films-for-the-lotr-fans-trouble/">isit The Black Gate website</a></i>.http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/08/three-hobbit-films-for-lotr-fans-trouble.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-4693468613716481323Wed, 25 Jul 2012 02:51:00 +00002012-08-03T06:43:57.801-04:00BooksReviewsTolkienThe Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, a review<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1kLOQ_2zg9Q/UA9eFG_DLrI/AAAAAAAAA-w/KSoV6iNnQ00/s1600/The_Silmarillion-Thirty_Years_On.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1kLOQ_2zg9Q/UA9eFG_DLrI/AAAAAAAAA-w/KSoV6iNnQ00/s320/The_Silmarillion-Thirty_Years_On.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The 1977 publication of <i>The Silmarillion</i> was a singular event in fantasy fiction. I’m happy to stand corrected, but I can’t think of another book of foundational myths and legends about a fictional, secondary world published prior. But as I mentioned in my introduction to my series <a href="http://www.thecimmerian.com/blogging-the-silmarillion/">Blogging the Silmarillion</a> it also left most critics puzzled, even put-out or angry. Expecting another <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, many acted with bafflement, others with harsh criticism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But in the subsequent 35 years opinion seems to be shifting. While it will never be as popular as The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, most fans of Middle-Earth view The Silmarillion as absolutely indispensable. Other genre fans do too, it seems. For example, in a recent vote of over 60,000 genre fans to determine the Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books?ft=1&amp;f=1008"><i>The Silmarillion </i>checked in at no. 46</a>, proving that it’s more than just a book for the JRRT fanboy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As for Tolkien scholars <i>The Silmarillion </i>is a goldmine, bringing to life ancient ages of Middle-Earth that were previously only hinted at in poems and appendices to The Lord of the Rings, or in Tolkien’s personal correspondence. The Silmarillion provides us a startlingly new perspective on the workings of free will and fate in Middle-Earth, of the nature of evil, and the problem of death. It showed how Tolkien forged his world from Christian and Pagan influences, including the Old Testament, Celtic myth, and Norse legends. The Silmarillion introduced readers to the eldest days of Middle-Earth, including the “hows” of its creation and the “who” of its chief creator, along with its wide-ranging geography, both pre and post-cataclysm. It also opened a new window into Tolkien’s creative process, including his ingenious method of creating depth by layering “forgotten” texts and “historical” events and myths on top of each other, a technique that produced a three-dimensional world that feels real, and lived in. Soon the debates began about how much of the work was Tolkien’s own vs. that of his son Christopher, who finished and published <i>The Silmarillion</i> after his father’s death with the aid of fantasy fiction author Guy Gavriel Kay.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The incredible significance of The Silmarillion and the exciting new avenues it opened up are summed up in <b>The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On</b> (Walking Tree Publishers, 2007). This collection of six essays includes one previously published piece by Rhona Beare in a now out-of-print introduction to <i>The Silmarillion</i>, but it is completely rewritten for this book. The other five pieces are original scholarship.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D5uv4gbYteM/UA9ejncS57I/AAAAAAAAA-4/1x_3cUDPiM8/s1600/silmarillion_nasmith_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D5uv4gbYteM/UA9ejncS57I/AAAAAAAAA-4/1x_3cUDPiM8/s320/silmarillion_nasmith_cover.jpg" width="206" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;">I’ve always enjoyed reading essays on fantasy literature and in particular JRR Tolkien scholarship. They serve to illuminate these works and prompt us to think deeper about various aspects of the work. What scholarly essays don’t always do, however, is touch us, or move us deeply, or get our heads nodding in a “yeah, that’s why I love fantasy fiction too,” type of way. But that’s how “Reflections on Thirty Years of Reading The Silmarillion” by Michael Drout made me feel. Drout’s essay is intensely personal, a recollection of his first encounter with The Silmarillion which he received as a Christmas present in December of 1977. Drout had just moved from </span><st1:state style="background-color: white;" w:st="on">New York</st1:state><span style="background-color: white;"> to a suburb of </span><st1:place style="background-color: white;" w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Boston</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Massachusetts</st1:state></st1:place><span style="background-color: white;"> (my neck of the woods, incidentally). That winter the region was hit with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_United_States_blizzard_of_1978">Blizzard of 1978</a></span><span style="background-color: white;">. In addition to the suffocating snows the nine year-old Drout was coping with his parents’ impending divorce and separation from his friends, family, and childhood home. Yet paradoxically the bleakness of <i>The Silmarillion</i> and its terrible scenes of carnage and defeat (The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the Fall of Gondolin) served as a salve for Drout, who learned in its pages the value of courage and resilience and of exhibiting tenacity in defeat. Drout also learned that nostalgia is a genuine emotion worthy of exploration, not of shame, as it is a part of the spectrum of the human condition. At some point in our adolescence most of us begin to dimly realize that we’re alive, which also means we realize that we’re also going to die someday, and that all our lives end in darkness and uncertainty. We long for the days of our innocence, and that longing creates a form of stasis in our minds, a vision of a paradise of old not unlike the immortal lands of Tolkien’s ageless Elves. Drout says that <i>The Silmarillion</i> and its tales of glorious elder days and even of long defeats “make(s) this lost beautify seem completely natural… Tolkien’s work has provided a master narrative, the workings out of a pattern of building and loss, triumph and fall, beauty and wreckage that seems to me to lie beneath all of human history, both the immediately personal histories of individual lives and the vast sweep of peoples and nations. Tolkien created both the longing and the memory for which it longs.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The name Steve Tompkins is likely unknown to many or most readers of this blog. Tompkins wrote for the now defunct website <i>The Cimmerian</i>, of which I was also contributor. He wrote the introduction to the Del Rey <i>Kull: Exile of Atlantis</i> and for the REHupa fanzine. In 2009 Tompkins passed away unexpectedly at the far too young age of 48 but his essays are worth finding and gleaning for their insights. Of Drout’s essay and its exploration of nostalgia, <a href="http://www.thecimmerian.com/long-ago-far-away-and-so-much-better-than-it-is-today/">he wrote</a>:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i>We humans aren’t as lucky (or is it unlucky?) as Tolkien’s Elves, but Valinors of sorts are available to us, be they the green-gold stun grenade of a spring day, the Polaroid poignance of that one page it might be easier to skip in the photo album, or a chance hearing of a long-ago hit single that ruled the airwaves all during one of those cusp-between-adolescence-and-adulthood summers when possibility and probability were still in equipoise.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p><span style="background-color: white;">That’s poetry disguised as prose, folks. At risk of sounding maudlin it was Steve’s essay caused me to seek out </span><i style="background-color: white;">The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On</i><span style="background-color: white;">. Now onto the rest of the review.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wJF3cbc5CUk/UA9e2_PUmAI/AAAAAAAAA_A/C-SJ7gnKaqI/s1600/Ted_Nasmith_-_The_Ships_of_the_Faithful.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wJF3cbc5CUk/UA9e2_PUmAI/AAAAAAAAA_A/C-SJ7gnKaqI/s320/Ted_Nasmith_-_The_Ships_of_the_Faithful.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Rhona Beare’s piece (“A Mythology for <st1:place w:st="on">England</st1:place>”) serves as a perfect introduction as it addresses the question of “why” <i>The Silmarillion</i> was written. Tolkien wanted to compose a body of myth appropriate to <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">England</st1:country>, Beare writes, since he was unsatisfied with the Celtic (which proved too self-contradictory and incoherent for his tastes), while the Greek was entirely of the wrong climate and character. <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">England</st1:country> belonged to the North-west of Europe, with its cold winters and native pine, willow, oak, and yew trees, very different than the warm, mild Mediterranean climes. In short, it was a land closer in spirit to Beowulf than Apollo. Beare explores this Northern connection in some detail, but also branches out to demonstrate that Tolkien seems to have found inspiration in other sources as well: For example, China’s first emperor (who longed to escape death by finding the elixir of life) may have inspired the corrupt Numenorean king Ar-Pharazon, who likewise sought immortality at all costs; in Plato Tolkien may have first read of the downfall of Atlantis, and from the Greek romance of Alexander he may have derived inspiration for the two trees of Valinor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anna Slack’s “Moving Mandos: The Dynamics of Subcreation in ‘Of Beren and Luthien’” demonstrates how the act of subcreation—of making by the laws in which we’re made, to paraphrase Tolkien’s poem <i>Mythopoeia</i>—is noble and good. “Tolkien argues that just as God made men, so men, fashioned in the likeness of God, make still because their fibre retains some consciousness of that initial creative act,” Slack writes. Eru, the creator of Middle-Earth, spoke the world into being, just as Luthien subcreates through her songs, and Beren "makes" though his oaths to avenge the death of his kinsmen and recover a Silmaril, which he fulfills. These aren’t just words, but transformative acts: Luthien’s song of mourning for Beren in the halls of Mandos moves the god to pity and leads to Beren’s resurrection. “This dynamic gives supernatural value to words, and as such affects the transaction between writer and page, implying that the historical world can be altered by both the utterances and subcreative works of men, just as the creator’s voice brought forth the eternal,” writes Slack.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Michael Devaux’ “The Origins of the Ainulindale: The Present State of Research” is an in-depth examination of the first section of <i>The Silmarillion </i>which tells of&nbsp;Eru's creation of Arda and the godlike Ainur. Devaux strays outside the pages of <i>The Silmarillion</i> in his research, evaluating the Ainulinale against versions published in the <i>History of Middle-Earth</i>. This is probably the most “academic” (and driest) essay in the volume, a detailed comparison of the various texts to determine which parts of the myth are original and which were subsequent reworkings by Tolkien. It is interesting here to see how Tolkien began with a more pagan-inspired creation myth and gradually drifted closer to his Christian roots and <i>Genesis</i>, along with a strong strain of <st1:city w:st="on">Milton</st1:city>’s <i>Paradise Lost</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jason Fisher’s “From Mythopoeia to Mythography: Tolkien, Lonnrot, and Jerome" fills in a much-needed chapter in the history of <i>The Silmarillion</i>: The incredibly difficult job Christopher Tolkien had in bringing his father’s drafts and notes into a completed, publishable form, and the agonizing decisions he made along the way. Fisher compares Christopher’s work to Snorri Sturluson, Jacob Grimm, and Elias Lonnrot (the <i>Kalevela</i>), and other great mythographers of the past who faced the difficult task of assembling single, coherent works from scattered or fragmented legends.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Fisher says Christopher’s choice was “between making nothing unfinished available posthumously; making everything available, no matter how unclear, disordered, or inconsistent; or attempting to strike a balance between these two extremes.” He ultimately chose the latter approach, a “minimalist” rather than a “maximalist” view to collecting the tales (choosing the most representative stories, rather than the kitchen sink, as we get in The History of Middle-Earth). J.R.R. Tolkien had at one point imagined <i>The Silmarillion</i> as a collection of different texts, poems, annals, etc., possibly in order to create the illusion that he was recording a history, not presenting a fictional text, a conceit which lends <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> its great depth. Christopher ultimately did not opt for that route, but rather presented the stories as a (fairly) straightforward narrative. While Fisher argues that the task of assembling The Silmarillion “could have been approached from any number of angles,” resulting in a markedly different final book, in the end we owe Christopher an enormous debt for bringing it to print. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the concluding essay of the volume (“Viewpoints, Audiences and Lost Texts in The Silmarillion”) Nils Ivar Agoy states that <i>The Silmarillion</i> fails as a representative of Tolkien’s favored “lost text technique,” in which he attempted to lend authenticity and depth to his writings by presenting as a “lost” text “discovered” or retold centuries or millennia later (just as <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is supposedly taken from Bilbo’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_of_Westmarch">Red Book of Westmarch</a>). “This technique has many functions, the most important of which—besides giving great pleasure to Tolkien himself—is that it lends verisimilitude to the works, makes the reader’s suspension of disbelief easier by blurring the line of fact and fiction,” Agoy writes. <i>The Silmarillion</i> cannot be successfully read from this viewpoint, he argues, because it is unclear who the stories are for and why they are written as they are (they’re not told from an Elven, or Hobbit, or even Human perspective, but rather from that of an omnipotent narrator or occasionally the Elven). Agoy recommends we take a “lost text holiday” when reading <i>The Silmarillion</i> and it enjoy it as a laconic, remote account of the elder days of Middle-Earth. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In summary, I found all the essays in <i>The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On</i> highly readable and enjoyable, but it was Drout’s that proved genuinely moving. Again I thank him and Steve Tompkins for helping me to express why <i>The Silmarillion</i>—this much-maligned “Elvish telephone directory”—means so much to me, and to so many others.</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-silmarillion-thirty-years-on-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-8458245148244034879Fri, 20 Jul 2012 01:17:00 +00002018-01-27T10:02:33.560-05:00Black GateBooksPoul AndersonSwords and SorceryVikingsSix Sought Adventure: A Half-Dozen Swords And Sorcery Short Stories Worth Your Summer Reading Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ-Hm1PT-Xg/UAiwsgpSUYI/AAAAAAAAA-k/vM4tIbsIW8o/s1600/Fantasy+Poul+Anderson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ-Hm1PT-Xg/UAiwsgpSUYI/AAAAAAAAA-k/vM4tIbsIW8o/s320/Fantasy+Poul+Anderson.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>I’ve always enjoyed fantasy fiction in the short form. In an age when a typical series stretches seven-plus doorstopper sized volumes without the guarantee of an actual ending, it’s refreshing to take a quick dip into the pool of the fantastic rather than committing to a read akin to a trans-Atlantic journey in the age of sail.<br /><br />&nbsp;If you are new to the heroic fantasy/swords and sorcery genres the following six stories are fine stepping stones for further exploration, at least in my opinion. I’ve deliberately chosen stories written by authors not named Howard or Leiber; REH and Fritz are the best these genres have ever produced but there’s already plenty of ink spilled about them. I obviously have nothing but praise for “Worms of the Earth” or “Bazaar of the Bizarre” but I’m sure most of <b>Black Gate's</b> readers have very likely already read these stories, so I present these six instead.<br /><br /><i>To read the rest of this post, <a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/07/19/six-sought-adventure-a-half-dozen-swords-and-sorcery-short-stories-worth-your-summer-reading-time/">visit The Black Gate website.</a></i>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/07/six-sought-adventure-half-dozen-swords.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-6848156770591094131Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:31:00 +00002012-07-19T21:17:34.600-04:00King ArthurNewsTolkienA holy grail (of sorts) for fans of Tolkien and King ArthurSorry for the lack of posts of late, I sincerely hope to get back on a more regular schedule. But here is a bit of news worth sharing: According to this rather sparse, cryptic entry on <i>Amazon.com France</i>, Tolkien's previously unpublished poem "The Fall of Arthur" <a href="http://www.amazon.fr/Fall-Arthur-Deluxe-Edi-Hb/dp/0007489897/ref=sr_1_6?s=english-books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1342094217&amp;sr=1-6">is planned for a May 2013 release</a>.<br /><br />"The Fall of Arthur" is a lengthy (954 lines), alliterative, and unfinished work. Tolkien loved reading the Arthurian myths as a boy and in the early 1930s began to write "The Fall," but ultimately abandoned it, though various outlines and drafts survive in addition to the final unfinished text (source: T<i>he J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide</i>, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond, p. 56). Ultimately Tolkien fell away from the Arthurian stories, which he regarded as too mixed with other elements and influences and lacking enough of Britain's character; the stories were "associated with the soil of Britain but not with English," according to Tolkien. Hence his reason for writing <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> and its supporting legendarium as told in <i>The Silmarillion </i>and elsewhere, which serve as an alternative mythic history of England.<br /><br />Like <a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2011/03/03/drinking-in-the-demonic-energy-of-tolkiens-the-legend-of-sigurd-and-gudrun/">"The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun"</a> I fully expect that this will come and go without huge fanfare or sales. But for hardcore fans of Tolkien and Tolkien scholars, it's huge. Maybe not quite as huge as say, the discovery of Excalibur, or Arthur returning over the sea from Avalon to set our darkening world aright again, but huge nonetheless. And it just might prove to be a cracking good read; again quoting from Scull and Hammond:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Humphrey Carpenter comments in Biography that in his work 'Tolkien did not touch on the Grail but began an individual rendering of the Morte d'Arthur, in which the king and Gawain go to war in "Saxon lands" but are summoned home by news of Mordred's treachery .... It is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred's unsated lust for Guinever (which is how Tolkien chooses to spell her name .... ' But here Guinever 'is not the tragic heroine beloved by most Arthurian writers'; rather, she is a 'lady ruthless / fair as fay-woman and fell-minded, / in the world walking for the woe of men.'</blockquote><br /><i>Hat tip to the Mythsoc listserv for the news.</i>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/07/holy-grail-of-sorts-for-fans-of-tolkien.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-7280784474440858510Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:59:00 +00002012-07-08T10:21:46.696-04:00BooksReviewsThe Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a review<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pP7cQS5Cmtw/T_mRjHPJCgI/AAAAAAAAA-Y/ICpjq_nNIwE/s1600/The+Name+of+the+Rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pP7cQS5Cmtw/T_mRjHPJCgI/AAAAAAAAA-Y/ICpjq_nNIwE/s320/The+Name+of+the+Rose.jpg" width="207px" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Warning: Spoilers ahead; I’m attempting to keep them minor</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>--Umberto Eco, </i>The Name of the Rose</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There are days when I feel rather ambivalent about the internet. When I was growing up back in the early-mid 80s the concept of <i>lore</i> still existed. No one I knew could tell you what the symbols on <i>Led Zeppelin 4</i> really meant; it was all speculation. If you wanted to find out you had to ask a guardian at the gates, perhaps a burnout with a subscription to <i>Rolling Stone</i> or <i>Kerrang</i> who could (sort of) give you the straight dope. Knowledge was concentrated among the few and you had to work hard to earn it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course even back then you had public education and public libraries; the information was still there, just slightly less accessible than today. Now all you have to do is punch everything into Google (buyer beware about the quality of information returned, but you’ll find <i>something</i>). And though much is gained in this process, something is lost.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But most of the time I’m glad I live in the information age. It’s hard to imagine a time in which books were incalculably precious items, patiently copied and illustrated by monks in a painstaking manual process. This is the setting of Umberto Eco’s <i>The Name of the Rose</i> (1980), which takes place in a 14<sup>th</sup> century Medieval monastery, home to a group of monks and a library of old tomes and scrolls. When a monk dies under mysterious circumstances new visitor William of Baskerville is tasked by the abbot to investigate. Over the next seven days a different monk is murdered according to precepts laid out in Revelations, heightening the mystery and the urgency.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="background-color: white;">So </span><i style="background-color: white;">The Name of the Rose</i><span style="background-color: white;"> is a murder mystery, but that’s like saying </span><i style="background-color: white;">Watership Down</i><span style="background-color: white;"> is about a bunch of rabbits looking for a new warren. The novel’s wonder and originality is in its digressions and commentary on religious and political issues of the Medieval Age, many of which are still in debate today. Eco takes us into philosophical questions like the nature of God, authority and the proper way by which mankind should rule itself, the nature of inquisitions and heresies, the acquisition of wealth vs. adherence to poverty and simplicity, and much more. It’s a book full of huge asides, but most of them are fascinating. For example, of the matter of church and state:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>William said that his deductions seemed to him supported by the very example of Christ, who did not come into this world to command, but to be subject to the conditions he found in the world, at least as far as the laws of Caesar were concerned. He did not want the apostles to have command and dominion, and therefore it seemed a wise thing that the successors of the apostles should be relieved of any worldly or coercive power. If the pope, the bishops, and the priests were not subject to the worldly and coercive power of the prince, the authority of the prince would be challenged, and thus, with it, an order would be challenged that, as had been demonstrated previously, had been decreed by God… All this, William added with a cheerful expression, is no limitation of the powers of the supreme Pontiff, but, rather, an exaltation of his mission: because the servant of the servants of God is on this earth to serve and not to be served.</i></blockquote><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In other words, if you’re an impatient reader or expecting an action-packed “whodunit” you won’t like <i>The Name of the Rose</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At the heart of <i>The Name of The Rose</i> is an examination of knowledge, and the means by which we acquire it and distribute it. The chief perpetrator of the murders believes that the only true knowledge is the knowledge of God, and anything that threatens that order should be locked away or destroyed. William is a religious man but also a skeptic and believes in free inquiry, regardless of where rationality may lead. It makes for a fascinating debate. Eco is skeptical about the veracity of ever discovering the “truth”. All we can do is make our best decisions based on the knowledge at hand, which is why it’s so critical to have all the evidence in the form of books and recorded testimony.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A few other things about the book are worth mentioning. <i>The Name of the Rose</i> isn’t the easiest book to read and I think it will take an average reader more than a single read to take it all in (I certainly didn’t grok everything during my once-through). It contains untranslated Latin passages, which are a bit of an annoyance, but you don’t need to understand Latin in order to read it. I can’t read Latin but they didn’t hinder my absorption of the book, though I imagine they would have enriched it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A final aside: While reading my personal copy during our vacation I accidentally left it on the beach overnight, and a driving rainstorm passed through. As I finished it I was carefully leafing through its sopping pages. Though intact, my copy is essentially ruined. Since <i>The Name of the Rose</i> also discusses the fragility of learning and the tragedy of lost knowledge it proved to be a rather striking coincidence.</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/07/name-of-rose-by-umberto-eco-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-2291459902621767762Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:00:00 +00002012-07-06T16:00:27.642-04:00BiographicalBlack GateBack from vacation with a Black Gate post on WWZWell, I'm back from our annual family vacation in New Hampshire, a small slice of fun and relaxation that is almost entirely internet free, even in this day and age of satellites and cell phone towers. So obviously it's been a while since my last post. Time to dust things off and get started again.<br /><br />If you're interested, I wrote a brief blurb about the sad state of the <b>World War Z </b>film over on Black Gate (nothing too revelatory; I owe them a post every other Thursday and so had to dash something off last night. Gee, I'm really selling it well.)<a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/07/05/world-war-z-film-appears-headed-for-armageddon/"> You can read the post here. </a>WWZ is a great book that deserves a great film but I'm not liking what I'm reading about the project so far...http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/07/back-from-vacation-with-black-gate-post.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-3830755914505770408Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:57:00 +00002012-07-07T15:44:17.481-04:00BiographicalHeavy MetalMusicA review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MAMy apologies for the delay in posting a review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA. The morning after the show, groggy from too little sleep and too much beer and loud music, I left for our annual vacation to our family's summer cottage in NH where internet access wavers between extremely spotty and utterly non-existent. By some miracle I have a decent connection so here goes...<br /><br />It seems that more and more I appreciate the pre-game warmup to concerts as much as the event itself. That was the case with Maiden, as I attended the show with four other friends and Maiden fans. None of them knew each other (I was the common thread connecting them all) but we had a great time nonetheless. Four of us piled into my Chevy Cobalt and drove to Mansfield where we met the other dude (Falze), who had a 3 1/2 hour ride up from NY. The drive and meet-up proved to be an adventure, as after a longer than expected, traffic-snarled ride we found ourselves parked a mile away from Falze in Mansfield's enormous parking lot. And we had a large cooler packed to the gills with ice, beer, water, and half a cherry chocolate cake to carry. But, walking the heavy cooler in two at a time shifts, stopping to reorient ourselves with our cell phones over the din of blasting radios, we made it across the battle-torn, pot-smoke obscured, heavy metal parking lot to Falze.<br /><br />June 26 also happened to be my birthday and as we stood on the Comcast Center asphalt I remarked that there was no other place I'd rather be for the first day of the 39th year of my life than at an Iron Maiden concert with a cold beer. I don't require much from life, you see, which is the secret to staying happy, incidentally. I had a blast bullshitting and chit-chatting with my friends, and accosting passers-by with concert T-shirts or tattoos that caught my eye. Falze packed us some subs from a place called DiBellas and man, they hit the spot. You were right Falze, they were worth it.<br /><br />Inside the show I did something I hadn't done in probably 15 years--purchased an Iron Maiden concert t-shirt. It was my favorite Derek Riggs image, Eddie in cowboy hat at a card table from the <b>Stranger in a Strange Land</b> single. I used to buy a concert T at almost every show I attended "back in the day," but that was a different era when they cost $15-20 and I had ample opportunity to wear them. This shirt was--<i>cough $40 cough</i>--but arguably was worth it, as I will undoubtedly be wearing it to any and all future concerts, Iron Maiden or no.<br /><br />Alice Cooper was the opening act and old Alice was very good. Even in his heyday he had a raspy, scary sounding voice and I detected no difference in his singing style. He played all the usual hits you'd expect ("School's Out," "I'm 18", "Hey Stupid," etc.). "Poison" made an appearance, a song that holds powerful nostalgia for me (Cooper's Trash tour back in 89 or so was the first concert I ever attended). Good stuff.<br /><br />Maiden was great. Really my only complaint was that Bruce's mike was a bit low in the mix and the guitars too loud. But they played an exceptional setlist, blasting out of the gates with "Moonchild" and never letting up. Some highlights for me included "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," "The Evil that Men Do," "Wasted Years,"&nbsp; "Run to the Hills," "Fear of the Dark" and "Aces High." I was really pumped to hear "The Phantom of the Opera" which works exceptionally well in concert. The only headscratcher (and it was a complete puzzle why they played it) was "Afraid to Shoot Strangers," an obscure song off one of their lesser-regarded albums (Fear of the Dark). Dickinson dedicated the song to the late Charlton Heston. I scooted out and grabbed a beer during "Afraid," returning just as the band kicked it back into high gear with "The Trooper." During the beer break I attempted to get the Comcast Center employee to admit that $9.25 was very expensive for a single 16 oz. Coors Light. She smiled, and almost caved, but she had to toe the company line. She wished me happy birthday and my mouth sagged open in surprise as I asked her by what brand of evil sorcery she knew that fact--until my buddy Scott dope-slapped me.<br /><br />"She's holding your driver's license, you dummy."<br /><br />Hey, what can I say, I was riding a buzz.<br /><br />So yeah, fun night, and if you can get out and catch a stop on the Maiden England tour I recommend it quite highly.http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/review-of-iron-maiden-at-comcast-center.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-5964392807493956542Tue, 26 Jun 2012 02:03:00 +00002012-06-25T22:17:56.847-04:00Heavy MetalMusicMetal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown, "Killers"Imagine it's 1981 and you're a member of Iron Maiden. Your lead singer, Paul Di'Anno, has just left/been kicked out of the band, and although you've got two well-received albums under your belt, your future is very much in question. In comes a shortish dude with a mullet, Bruce Dickinson, front man for Sampson, to audition for the vacancy.<br /><div><br /></div><div>He launches into a Maiden hallmark, "Killers." The rest is history, as was Di'Anno.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/TVWpN6hfBCY?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><div></div><div><span style="background-color: white;">I hope to post a review of tomorrow's show at some point this week. Until then, <i>Up the Irons</i>!</span></div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/metal-friday-special-edition-maiden_25.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-6768226136535058024Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:20:00 +00002012-06-24T08:37:24.554-04:00BooksReviewsSwords and SorceryThe Year’s Best Fantasy Stories 11, a review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-mmfKwgfXE/T-Xs-xq9doI/AAAAAAAAA-M/i6fsv67AOSg/s1600/Year's+Best+Fantasy+Stories+11+Saha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u-mmfKwgfXE/T-Xs-xq9doI/AAAAAAAAA-M/i6fsv67AOSg/s400/Year's+Best+Fantasy+Stories+11+Saha.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>From 1975 to 1988 Daw books published <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year's_Best_Fantasy_Stories_(series)" style="background-color: white;">The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories</a>, an anthology edited initially by Lin Carter and later by Arthur W. Saha. I own only Vol. 11 but after reading it I’m now inclined to seek out more in the series. <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Vol. 11 was published in 1985 and by then Carter’s reign as editor had given way to Saha. Saha has a rather interesting and wide-ranging background; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_W._Saha">according to Wikipedia</a> he served in the Merchant Marine during WWII, is credited with the patent for fire-resistant paint used on early space satellites, hung around Beat poets, was a member of Mensa, and in 1967 was credited with coining the term “Trekkie”. Matching his experiences and personality Saha here put together an eclectic combo of stories that mostly works.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My primary complaint with Vol. 11 is again one of unfulfilled expectations. When you’ve got a cover like that pictured at right I was expecting more of a swords and sorcery bent. There are certainly a few S&amp;S stories inside, but Vol. 11 is equal parts horror and magical realism, with a dash of romance and humor. Yet you’ve got a cover featuring a jacked, axe-wielding dude on the back of a giant snake, about to battle a giant owl-riding knight in plate armor, all taking place beneath the gaze of a half-naked lass lashed to a pole (for the record, there is no story featuring dueling snakes and owls, unfortunately—though there is a fair maiden lashed to a pole). So … yeah. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal">There are two excellent stories in Vol. 11. My favorite is the lead, “Draco, Draco” by Tanith Lee, which reminded me of <b>Dragonslayer</b> but with a grittier edge. It takes place in the wild, lawless years shortly after the fall of Rome and has a gritty, historical feel to it, albeit with an honest to goodness dragon. An Apothecary (I don’t believe we ever learn his name, but he’s a wonderfully drawn character, shrewd and incisive) is half-bullied into picking up an unhorsed warrior named Caiy (a blustery, posturing sort of fellow, though brave and strong). The two travel to a nearby village suffering under the thrall of a dragon. The villagers placate the beast by offering up a virgin for consumption. Caiy attempts to play the role of hero and the results are anything but what you’d expect. I enjoyed every bit of it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Gene Wolfe is a legendary author who I largely find hit and miss. I’ve read several of his short stories and am often left scratching my head, their meaning soaring clear past my mortal, addled mind. But “A Cabin on the Coast” was a well-written hit, with a twist ending I did not see coming. It's about a well-heeled son of a politician faced with sacrificing everything to save his would-be fiancee. It serves as a very satisfying end to the anthology.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The rest of the anthology was mixed, but with more hits than misses. Clark Ashton Smith makes an appearance here with “Strange Shadows.” While long dead prior to 1984 (the year in which all the stories in Vol. 11 first saw publication), “Strange Shadows” saw print in <i>Crypt of Cthulhu</i> 25, published in ’84. Unsurprisingly it contains a heavy strain of the Weird and is very, very Smith, featuring an offbeat, alcoholic narrator who suddenly begins to see shadows that reveal dark, twisted facets of their owners’ personalities. It’s a good story but Smith has written much better.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Stoneskin” by John Morressy is a fun little swords and sorcery romp about a warrior who sleeps with a hideous witch in magical guise. After getting over the initial shock he's repaid when the witch renders him immune to weapons, though not indefinitely. “Taking Heart” by Stephen L. Burns is the other swords and sorcery story in the volume and is plainly influenced by Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but while entertaining it falls a few notches short of Leiber’s high standard.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">David Morrell (author of <b>First Blood</b>) also makes an appearance here. I like Morrell quite a bit as an author, as he reminds me a little of Joe Lansdale with a style that’s engaging, easy to read, and straight to the point. But “The Storm” (about a father who is cursed by an Indian weather dancer to be followed by a driving rainstorm wherever he goes) was merely average, with a cheap gag ending tacked on.&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Everything else in here is a mixed bag.</div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/years-best-fantasy-stories-11-review.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-864868963537551871Fri, 22 Jun 2012 23:49:00 +00002012-06-22T19:49:38.978-04:00Dungeons and DragonsMetal FridayMusicMetal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown, "The Clairvoyant"Continuing my countdown to the Maiden England tour (holy shit--it's only four days away), today I pause to recognize and celebrate the greatness that is "The Clairvoyant," again off <i>Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.</i><br /><i><br /></i><br />Here's a great live version from the Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour, circa 1988 or 89, I imagine.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/CdWA-SNcYpM?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><br /><i><br /></i><br />Whenever I hear Steve Harris' bassline something akin to an electric shock courses through my body, then my heart starts to race when Dave Murray plays that familiar riff. <i>That's how much I freaking love this song</i>. It exalts the spirit.<br /><br />Four days away. I can "Feel the sweat break on my brow" in anticipation.http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/metal-friday-special-edition-maiden_22.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-143871292032261127Fri, 22 Jun 2012 03:26:00 +00002012-06-21T23:26:06.746-04:00Black GateBooksTolkienQ&A With Tolkien and the Great War Author John Garth on Michael Martinez’ Middle-earth website<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvUKgzWaFPM/T-Plm4P9U8I/AAAAAAAAA-A/t61SMO0s34U/s1600/Tolkien+and+the+Great+War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvUKgzWaFPM/T-Plm4P9U8I/AAAAAAAAA-A/t61SMO0s34U/s320/Tolkien+and+the+Great+War.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>As a subscriber to the Mythsoc listserv I was very grateful to find a link from Michael Martinez—proprietor of the fine <em>Middle-earth.xenite.org</em> website—to a recent interview conducted with J.R.R. Tolkien scholar John Garth, author of <strong>Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth</strong> (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). It’s a fascinating read and worth checking out; <a href="http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2012/06/15/an-interview-with-john-garth/">you can find it here</a>.<br /><br /> Some reviewers have dubbed <strong>Tolkien and the Great War</strong> the best book on Tolkien that has yet been written. I wouldn’t go that far (for the record that book is Tom Shippey’s <strong>The Road to Middle-earth</strong>) but it is arguably the best book on Tolkien in the last decade. While Humphrey Carpenter’s biography is still the seminal work on the life and times of Tolkien, it brushes only lightly over his military service. Tolkien’s experiences with the Lancaster Fusiliers are stamped all over <strong>The Lord of the Rings</strong>, as Garth ably demonstrates in <strong>Tolkien and the Great War</strong>, and so any complete understanding of the influences of Tolkien’s works must account for his World War I experiences.<br /><br /><i>To read the rest of this post, <a href="http://www.blackgate.com/2012/06/21/qa-with-tolkien-and-the-great-war-author-john-garth-on-michael-martinez%e2%80%99-middle-earth-website/">visit The Black Gate website</a></i>.<br />http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/q-with-tolkien-and-great-war-author.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-9209859862466491684Sat, 16 Jun 2012 02:08:00 +00002012-06-15T22:08:06.077-04:00Heavy MetalMetal FridayMusicMetal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown. "The Evil That Men Do"Wow, it's hard to believe that it's only <a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/02/iron-maiden-maiden-england-tour-whos.html">11 days until Iron Maiden plays the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA</a>. Look for a heavy rotation of my favorite Maiden songs in the coming days as I gear up for my favorite band of all time.<br /><br />Since this tour is an homage to Maiden England and reportedly features the same stage set and props from the Seventh Son tour, I'll start with one of my favorites from that album, "The Evil that Men Do."<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/VWIBoAkFoiQ?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><br /><br />As a man, I can definitively say that we do have an evil streak (typically surfacing during heavy drinking) and it almost always comes back to bite us in the ass, hence it does live on and on. Bruce, you were right.http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/metal-friday-special-edition-maiden.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-8624618830714302520Fri, 15 Jun 2012 01:37:00 +00002012-06-14T21:37:26.969-04:00Thoughts on fantasyOptimistic literature vs. GrimDarkPresented without comment:<br /><br />He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, "This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other."<br /><br />—Michael Shaara, <i>The Killer Angels&nbsp;</i><br /><br />&nbsp;“Who cares who’s buried where?” muttered Craw, thinking about all the men he’d seen buried. “Once a man’s in the ground he’s just mud. Mud and stories. And the stories and the men don’t often have much in common.”<br /><br />&nbsp;—Joe Abercrombie, <i>The Heroes </i>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/optimistic-literature-vs-grimdark.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-5121058936284266963Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:39:00 +00002012-06-14T19:13:49.261-04:00HorrorReviewsSFFaudio.comZombiesAudio zombies: A review of We’re Alive: A Story of Survival, season one<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QO_i2fV9SCk/T9kiLd88FpI/AAAAAAAAA90/sjXzlPZbNKs/s1600/We're+Alive+a+story+of+survival.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QO_i2fV9SCk/T9kiLd88FpI/AAAAAAAAA90/sjXzlPZbNKs/s320/We're+Alive+a+story+of+survival.bmp" width="257" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>As a lover of all things zombie I leapt at the chance to review the first season of <b>We're Alive: A Story of Survival, the first season</b> <a href="http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=40369">for SFFaudio.com</a>. Following is the text of that review.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>----</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Uneven and slightly amateurish, but also fun, mildly addictive and highly listenable, <b>We’re Alive: A Story of Survival,</b> the first season (Modern Myth Productions, LLC) should appeal to fans of the zombie/post-apocalyptic/survivalist genres. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Unlike most audio books, which typically feature a single narrator reading text in unadorned style, <b>We’re Alive</b> is an audio drama. It employs a large cast, incorporates a wide range of sound effects, and is scripted in a way that caters to the ear, emphasizing dialogue and interpersonal relationships over lengthy descriptive narrative. Our minds are left to fill in the gory details, and it works. It’s simultaneously fresh and retro, reminding me of what the old radio shows of yesteryear must have been like. <b>We’re Alive</b> was launched and remains an ongoing podcast (check it out here: <a href="http://www.zombiepodcast.com/The_Zombie_Podcast/Main.html">http://www.zombiepodcast.com/The_Zombie_Podcast/Main.html</a>) but you can obtain the entire first two seasons from Blackstone Audio, Inc.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The storyline is about what you’d expect: A zombie apocalypse strikes without warning, quickly overwhelming most of the population. Three young Army reservists (Michael, Angel, and Saul) commandeer a humvee and seek out survivors in downtown Los Angeles. After rescuing a couple civilians they find an apartment building, clear it of zombies, and begin to fortify it, rigging it up with a generator and stocking up on food, water, and ammunition. More survivors eventually trickle in and/or are rescued by the group, including Burt, an aging <st1:country-region w:st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region>veteran who acts and sounds a lot like Clint Eastwood. Soon there’s a small but thriving community holed up in the apartment building.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><a name='more'></a><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>We’re Alive</b> has a few problems. I had a hard time distinguishing between some of the women as the men are generally given more agency and are more fully developed characters. There are some writing weaknesses, including characters that bicker and bitch over trifles and at times seem more concerned with saving face than staying alive. This creates plenty of distractions and gets the group in more trouble than it should, at first with zombies and later with a greedy, nasty group of human convicts (the “Mallers”). Also, a few of the characters’ skillsets seem a bit too fortuitous (one of the women is a pro archer—rather convenient).</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The story also uses zombies that break sharply with most undead traditions. Some have a rudimentary intelligence, at least one can talk and strategize, and at times they are directed by some unseen controlling force to capture and carry away their victims rather than consume them. While I’m not a strict zombie purist, these traits lessen their scare factor and weakened them as a threat. Zombies are at their best when they’re relentless, merciless eating machines; take away that characteristic and they become caricatures. There’s even some species of large zombie monsters lurking in the background, though they’re not described well and it’s impossible at least through season one to determine if they’re a large zombified animal or a creature of pure fancy. In short, if you’re a zombie purist, or expecting undead in the Romero mold or new Dawn of the Dead style, be prepared for a lot of “rule breaking.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But <b>We’re Alive</b>also has plenty of good things going on, enough to give it my recommendation. Most of the characters grow on you and the voice acting is reasonably good. There are enough plot twists and turns to keep you guessing. There’s a hardly a dull moment—when not fighting the undead or the Mallers, the survivors are fighting amongst themselves, often chafing against Michael’s inflexible never-question-my-orders military style of leadership. Ex lawyers and teachers find themselves growing vegetables on the rooftop, serving as quartermasters, or standing on guard duty, with inevitable grousing and dereliction of duties. As the survivors’ supplies start to dwindle, they’re forced to take increasingly dangerous runs for food and ammo into the “hot zone” of zombie and looter-infested downtown <st1:city w:st="on">L.A.</st1:city>There’s also a larger backstory about the hows and whys of the zombie outbreak that’s still unrevealed but will undoubtedly be a part of latter seasons. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While it lacks the moral/philosophical questions and hardcore grittiness of <b>The Walking Dead</b>, <b>We’re Alive</b> is nevertheless fun stuff and I’m looking forward to listening to season two.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>For more information on the making of We're Alive c<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3OswgPeBo">heck out this neat mini documentary on Youtube</a>.</i></div>http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/radio-zombies-review-of-were-alive.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-1580309771061035345Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:56:00 +00002012-06-12T19:56:43.002-04:00BiographicalBooksWhat I've read this yearHere's the list of books I've read to date in 2012. Note that a couple are audiobooks, so I use the term "read" loosely here. Links provided to any titles for which I've written a review.<br /><br /><br /><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Unfinished Tales,</b> JRR Tolkien</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/01/name-of-wind-emperor-may-have-clothes.html">The Name of the Wind</a></b>, Patrick Rothfuss</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/cold-commands/">The Cold Commands</a></b>, Richard Morgan</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-lord-of-rings-films-work-how-i.html">Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings</a></b>, Janet Brennan Croft ed.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/seven-princes-by-john-r-fultz-review.html">Seven Princes</a></b>, John Fultz</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon</b>, Brian Rosebury</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/heroes-by-joe-abercrombie-review.html">The Heroes</a></b>, Joe Abercrombie</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/02/falling-under-spell-of-sword-de-camps.html">Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers</a></b>, L. Sprague de Camp</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/02/styrbiorn-strong-review.html">Styrbiorn the Strong</a></b>, E.R. Eddison</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/well-of-unicorn-by-fletcher-pratt.html">The Well of the Unicorn</a></b>, Fletcher Pratt</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>The Modern Scholar: Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion</b>, Peter Kreeft</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/strange-wine-by-harlan-ellison-review.html">Strange Wine</a></b>, Harlan Ellison</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/03/some-thoughts-upon-reading-john.html">Grendel</a></b>, John Gardner</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=38209">The Hook</a></b>, Donald Westlake</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/04/carnage-and-culture-by-victor-davis.html">Carnage and Culture</a></b>, Victor Hanson</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Conan: Red Nails</b>, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner ed.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>The Dark Barbarian</b>, Don Herron ed.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>Conan, The People of the <st1:street w:st="on">Black Circle</st1:street></b>, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner ed.</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/04/33-years-to-immortality-maybe.html">The Singularity is Near</a></b>, Ray Kurzweil</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard</b></li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/05/children-of-odin-by-padraic-colum.html">The Children of Odin</a></b>, Padraic Colum</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/05/of-red-moon-and-black-mountain-and.html">Red Moon and Black Mountain</a></b>, Joy Chant</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>No Regrets,</b> Ace Frehley</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/05/brak-vs-sorceress-really-bad-read.html">Brak vs. the Sorceress</a></b>, John Jakes</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/dragon-lord-by-david-drake-review.html">The Dragon Lord</a></b>, David Drake</li><li class="MsoNormal"><b>We’re Alive: A Story of Survival</b>, season one</li></ol><br />I'm on pace for 56 titles this year, a few more than I read in 2011. Right now I'm about 2/3 of the way through Orson Scott Card's <b>Speaker for the Dead, </b>sequel to <b><a href="http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2007/12/enders-game-review.html">Ender's Game</a>.</b><br /><br />http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/what-ive-read-this-year.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5723077228948447528.post-4051846668495893220Fri, 08 Jun 2012 22:57:00 +00002012-06-08T18:57:55.100-04:00Metal FridayMusicMetal Friday: "Left Hand Black" by DanzigYeah, the safe choice here would have been "Mother."<br /><br />Well, Metal Friday ain't about safe choices, mother f-er (so says the guy who self-edits swears from his blog).<br /><br />Anyways, I loved this one back in the day, still do. Turn it up, tear off your shirt and pretend you're Glenn Danzig, and enjoy your weekend.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowFullScreen='true' webkitallowfullscreen='true' mozallowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/n8-catvkYCk?feature=player_embedded' FRAMEBORDER='0' /></div><br />http://thesilverkey.blogspot.com/2012/06/metal-friday-left-hand-black-by-danzig.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Murphy)2